The reasons for rejecting these religious fantasies have been given. It isn't just "opinion". This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism, not religion. Faith and dogma are not a basis for rational discussion.

He who has an "open mind" quickly has it filled with garbage. I have an active mind, which is not "open" to variations on what I know to be false. This isn't the place for you to promote "opening minds" to be "open" to your religion.

"You can't handle it" is personal projection, not rational argument. Nor does anyone here have an "underlying bias" of "hidden anti-semitism" and "warped thinking" by "haters" like the "Soviet Union". Please review the guidelines for posting here.

All governments do not "in essence do the same thing". Nor is it a matter of "kindness". A free society is not like a "prison".

This country is a mixed system. You have switched from the difference between a proper government versus dictatorship to talking about degrees of statism.

Sure a limited government is much kinder to the rights, which by the way are not something that exists but rather are relationships among individuals, of the individual, but there are degrees of limitation which are difficult to control by laws written on paper. I am not saying the governments are all equal but that in essence that they are do the same thing, regulate the freedom of action of their citizens, permitting very limited liberty in some case and much more in others. In all they are leashed to the people by laws or just might. A dictator acts by his own deranged moral code which allows him to act forcibly to the people without limits, keeping his power by instilling fear into those who support him. In a limited government environment, the officials are still leashed to the people and still stay in power by making the citizens fear what will happen if they lose their control. I prefer the latter, though it is more difficult to keep. It cannot be said that the governments of the USA are very limited with the number of laws and regulations filling on the order of a hundred thousand pages.In the village where I live, one needs permission to build, replace a roof, cut a tree on one's property, have water and sewer provided by the village (one woman refused and was fined $10,000 which she refused to pay, so was jailed for two weeks but that did not work so the village condemned and removed her house from her property. Just a tiny dictatorship to brush aside to give the citizens a little something to fear and give them a little incentive keep the same kind of officials.

You are rejecting anything that contradicts your opinion. Maybe you are the one promoting your fantasy that religion is fantasy. And since when is there a prohibition against having a discussion because you call it a fantasy? You just don't want to be contradicted. You can't handle it.

What you call history that you rely on IS the revisionist history. Most of what people today think they know just isn't so, Trying to open your mind is not against any guidelines. It is just futile. Good night.

Dictatorship does not recognize limitations on its own power. When it allows someone to do anything it is by discretion of those exercising the power, not a limitation on power. That is the opposite of a limited government protecting the rights of the individual, which is not like "prison".

Whatever this stream of consciousness is intended for it has nothing to do with anything I wrote. You apparently accused me of "saying that as rational beings, humans can conceptualize from objective reality what is free actions qua man and to be free to reify the concepts as existing in reality. Moral concepts exist only in minds created by brains and are various chemical and physical relations in the brain."

Ideas are not innate and the "chemical and physical relations in the brain" are irrelevant to discussion of ideas. None of it is relevant to the topic of the thread.

Sure a dictatorship recognizes limitations, how else do they allow some to leave and come back.
The idea of a prison is that one needs to obtain permission to both leave and return. At the national boarders, one must be able to prove to the governments that they are to be allowed to cross the boarder both ways. Prison does not imply harsh treatment, only the fact that one has no right to freely come and go. The boarder of my stare of Wisconsin do not require any permissions to cross in any direction with the surrounding states. One is not even asked. Toll roads are an exception but can be circumvented easily by other roads.

Religion requires thinking out of reality by non-rational means.

You wrote, "obligation/duty only relates to interactions with other people". It isn't true. The philosophical concept 'duty' does not pertain only to "interactions with other people", and 'obligation' and 'duty' are not interchangeable. You don't have a 'duties' at all, including to pets, or a 'duty' to not do something. "Negative duty" is a kind of 'duty', an invalid concept, as explained in "Causality Versus Duty".

Using the word 'versus' between 'causality' and 'duty' makes the sense explained in the article. Acting out of 'duty' rejects recognition of and acting in accordance with causality, i.e., rational requirements for living on earth. The verbal scrambling in "If duty is an anti-concept, then isn't negative duty an anti-anti-concept" makes no sense at all. Words are not floating tokens to be manipulated without meaning and context.

Nowhere did I indicate that principles are discovered as chemical and physical relations in the brain.
A principle is a concept and as such does not exist in reality other than in a mind which has formed the concept from observation of objective reality and then stored in the brain in chemical-physical processes. There are many principles of brain activity that are formed by observation of the chemical relationships within brains, none of which are exactly the same. If you want to try to say that a principle, as a concept, does not exist in a brain, but rather exists elsewhere, then you are trying to reify the concept of principle. A principle of morality is formed by observations of relationships between selves living in the objective world, with the concept former's own self as a standard of comparison, and what is necessary for their continued existences. Whether a self is able to create a good concept of reality depends on learning, by a selfish mind, of an extremely large amount of knowledge qua man. There is nothing in objective reality which will pop out to force one to even observe reality in a way that one need form any moral concept, observe those are who are amoral. It is a selfish mental process to recognize aspects of reality which might be good or bad to the one observing. Reality is conscious only in some living things, and only living things can choose to act and even act badly and reality will just be something which cannot act, feel, or care how a life is lived.
Concept formation is context related with the possibility that the abstraction is poorly done and apprehending the particular context necessarily to form a concept is not built into a mind but need be focused on, sometimes accidentally, which requires much mental practice.
E.g., the concept 'and' is formed by focusing on many different objects perceived through the senses or by rational thought about mental objects, abstracting them by ignoring anything other than that they exist as separate entities, consider them as group mentally, then the abstraction 'and' has been formed in a mind.
Hardly anyone learns a concept by an active process of concept formation. Most concepts are learned as dictionary definitions. No one forms more than a small number of concepts by abstracting from observation and rational thought, they just learn them from others and use them like memes passing from one person to another.
Rational people try reifying concepts quite often. Observe all the references to 'existing in time' or 'time flowing' where time is seen as some kind of real substance. The reference to 'Nature acting or trying do something', 'Nature punishing those who do not obey her', 'chemicals wanting to combine in certain ways', etc. Such metaphors can only occur by attempting to reify concepts. You might say such persons are not rational. Rationality is learned process with many pitfalls, such that it is hard mental work, in learning it. Just to do the mental work requires years of learning in a hostile environment of other people in families, schools, and the public.
How many of the maybe 20,000 or so concepts that you use, were actually formed by your observation of objective reality rather than just by dictionary definitions or just by how others seem to use them. If you do it by the latter two methods, that does not make you irrational, but only realistic due the tremendous time needed to do the objective research. Many of the concepts that I have are mathematical where they have very strict relationships to one another in their use and new such concepts formed when needed by rationally observing mental objects, i.e., concepts. Most though are just defined consistently with one another. Some relate to actions of real objects and are used to describe physical reality but others related to conceptual mental objects. Descriptions of reality involve various subsets of mathematics. Most of mathematics does not imply anything about objects in objective reality but only conceptual relationships which do not exist as real objects, e.g. concepts of twisters, pencils of extrema, tensors, etc.

I can agree with that. If someone willingly enters into an agreement (such as enlisting in military service), then there are obligations associated with that are based on value-for-value exchange.

As there are sometimes contagious diseases in some geographical areas, I do think it is legitimate for a country to require some kind of medical examination before entry.

She recognized "obligation" as depending on some anterior action, or agreement.

Just a negative duty: to abstain from violating the individual's rights (including abstention from fraud ;that means the others must not voluntarily enter into a contract with the individual, and then unilaterally breach it).

Ok if you have a god, you might have a duty. Also with pets, you have an obligation/duty to take it to the vet when necessary. My point is it is about interactions with others (other than self). But choice is an internal process. Using the word "versus" between two structurally different concepts makes little sense.
If duty is an anti-concept, then isn't negative duty an anti-anti-concept?

So you have investigated all religions.eh?
FYI Judaism encourages "thinking out of the box".

Too bad you can't think out of the box "Religion is Bad".

I see "liberty" as a group thing, i.e., a group of free people mutually agreeing to rule themselves. Whereas "freedom" is nuanced as an individual thing wherein you rule yourself. The epitomy of freedom would be the old mountain men who lived or died by their own competence.

Wrapping yourself in martyrdom is not a rational argument.

Rejecting promotion of fantasies of religion and religious revisionist history is not an "underlying bias" of "hidden anti-semitism" and "warped thinking" by "haters" like the "Soviet Union". Such accusations are disgusting.

Please review the guidelines for posting here.

Ayn Rand's philosophy did not come from Jewish thinking. No religion encourages "thinking outside the box" and those who do so are not restricted to Jewish backgrounds.

Instead of claiming others don't "look at the evidence" for your rationalizations for religious revisionist history and appeals to selective, out of context, unrepresentative quotes, you should learn something about the history of western philosophy and the Enlightenment. The notion that the Enlightenment and the founding of this country were based on Hebrew religion, Moses, and religious commandments is preposterous.

The Dark Ages and Middle Ages were in fact thoroughly dominated by religious other-worldliness mysticism and superstition, which shut down human progress and civilization for centuries. That is the result of other-worldliness mysticism and superstition, not a matter of which dogmas of what church are in charge.

The founding of our secular government did in fact assure our right to freedom from religion. Ayn Rand's objective, secular ethics of rational egoism provides the moral foundation to justify and sustain a free society. This forum is not a place for you to push your religion and religious revisionist history.

I did not say the greeks and Henbrews were the same. In the end who won? Greek pagan culture is no more. Egypt is not Egyptian. It is Muslim. Nothing survives into the present day except the Jews who received guidance from an interface with the underlying intelligence in which we exist. Nothing supernatural about that. It is nature.

And now we see the underlying bias that colors your comments and your thinking. The hidden Anti-Semitism.that lies underneath. So, It is the Hebrews fault that they have been persecuted?. You quote from the Koran and spout the same ugly rhetoric as the Islamic hate culture.
Ayn Rand is Jewish but that did not influence her thinking? How about the persecution by Religion haters like you in the Soviet Union? After all the persecution is her fault for being Jewish and smart in your warped thinking. Good luck to you. .

Various errors:

The longest surviving civilizations have been that of China and what we call ancient Egypt.
The history of the Jewish people contains achievement, brilliance, bravery, and culture. But this is not a civilization.

multiple meaning and truths A description given to the Koran by its adherents.
Many quotes from John Adams are given. His role in history requires his ideas to be regarded seriously, those that are wrong need not be given undue emphasis.

Hebrews applied Aristotle's principles I understand there were serious clashes between Greek and Hebrew thinking which gave war. While both had admirable and distasteful elements, they cannot be said to be the same.

I hesitate to encourage LarryHeart who is by no means an Objectivist, but how about doing a study to investigate the Jewish origins, if any, of Ayn Rand's thinking? I suggest there are links but only in her analytical ability to think outside the box and to confront established superstitions, rather updating remnants of the ideas of ancient nomads. That is, what could be expected from a minority culture who respect family, literacy and self sufficiency whose success so antagonized others that it produced isolation and persecution.

I have read that, and I disagree with Rand's definition (and others' definitions) of duty as requiring submission to some form of higher authority. If one accepts Rand's definition, then duty is indeed anti-life. For future discussions in this forum, I will be more selective in my word choice.

Responsibility for your own life is not duty. See "Causality Versus Duty".

A simple response is not "ruffled feathers".